Helicopter Crash Leaves 2 Dead in Central London

A helicopter crash badly damaged the crane on the building — the Tower, one of Europe’s tallest residential buildings.Credit
Victor Jimenez/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

LONDON — A helicopter crashed into a crane atop a residential tower in central London on Wednesday, exploding into flames and hurtling to the ground during the morning rush hour, the police said.

The pilot and a person on the ground were killed, British officials said, and at least 12 people were injured. Burning aviation fuel spilled along a street in the Vauxhall district on the south bank of the Thames, and British news reports spoke of cars on fire and people screaming.

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A policewoman looked at a damaged crane that was hit by a helicopter in central London.Credit
Carl Court/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The crash badly damaged the crane on the building — the Tower, one of Europe’s tallest residential buildings — and it was left dangling high over the street below, shrouded in a smoky haze. Fire engines, ambulances and dozens of firefighters converged on the scene of the crash. One man was rescued from a burning car, the London Fire Brigade said. Traffic snarled as the police shut down roads in the area.

The headquarters of Britain’s MI6 spy agency is nearby, but there were no suggestions that the crash was anything but an accident.

The Agusta 109 helicopter, with only the pilot on board, had been flying toward Elstree, the location of several film studios north of London, but was diverted because of bad weather. The charter company that operated the helicopter, RotorMotion, identified the pilot as Peter Barnes, 50.

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A firefighter walked toward the wreckage of a helicopter that crashed in central London on Wednesday.Credit
Andy Rain/European Pressphoto Agency

“He was a very highly skilled pilot, one of the most experienced in the U.K., with over 12,000 flying hours,” Philip Amadeus, the company’s chief pilot, said in a statement. “We are devastated by the loss of a highly valued colleague and a very dear friend.”

Mr. Barnes had been flying helicopters in Britain for 18 years on assignments, according to RotorMotion. Some were related to movies including the James Bond film “Die Another Day” as well as “Tomb Raider II” and “Saving Private Ryan.”

The RotorMotion Web site said Mr. Barnes was a former ski instructor who had completed training on helicopters in Florida. Helicopters are not unusual over London. “We have rules and there are procedures in place for helicopter flight,” a defense expert, Paul Beaver, told the Press Association news agency. “It’s much more challenging in reduced visibility. It’s very much up to the pilot to fly the right route and do the right things.”

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Burning aviation fuel spilled along a street in the Vauxhall district on the south bank of the Thames, and British news reports spoke of cars on fire and people screaming.Credit
The New York Times

Paulo Goncalves, 40, a stonemason from Portugal who works on the Tower, which is in the St. George Wharf development, said he was getting ready to go to work when he and his co-workers were told to evacuate the building. When they went outside, plumes of black smoke were billowing from the wreckage.

“It was scary,” he said. “Really, really scary.”

Edward Docx, a British novelist, said he left his nearby home about 15 minutes after hearing “a bang over the usual clamor of the city.” When he walked out into the smoke and sirens, he considered whether an attack had occurred, noting the proximity not only to the MI6 headquarters but also to a new American Embassy building, expected to be completed by 2017.

“I went forward again as far as I could to see for myself,” he wrote in an e-mail. “Once I knew it was an accident, it struck me that maybe the pilot had deliberately landed on the road. Because it’s wide at that point and there is a big housing estate on one side and a supermarket on the other, plus lots of railway lines crisscrossing the area and a vast flower market nearby — not to mention all the office buildings.

“It was clear to me that either London had been extremely lucky that he missed all of that. Or he was a brave and brilliant pilot who somehow pitched himself in those last terrible few seconds at the least destructive landing site he could see. A few meters in any direction and the tragedy could have been much, much worse.”

Correction: January 21, 2013

An article on Thursday about the crash of a helicopter that hit a crane atop a residential tower in central London referred incorrectly to the location of the crash. It was near the construction site of a new American embassy, scheduled for completion in 2017; it was not near the existing American Embassy, which is in Grosvenor Square.

Lark Turner reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.

A version of this article appears in print on January 17, 2013, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: Helicopter Crash Leaves 2 Dead in Central London. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe